Hello and welcome to the Zero to Finals podcast.

My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be talking to you about cardiac arrhythmias.

And if you want to follow along with written notes on this topic,

you can follow along at zero tofinals.com slash arrhythmiers or in the cardiology section of the zero to finals medicine book.

So let's get straight into it.

As the name suggests, arrhythmias are abnormal heart rhythms

and they result from an interruption to the normal electrical signals

that coordinate the contraction of the heart muscle.

And there's several types of arrhythmias,

each with different causes and different management options.

It's worth reading the resuscitation guidelines

from the Resuscitation Council UK

and attending their courses prior to treating patients with arrhythmias.

This section is a summary of the guidelines

in order to improve your knowledge and understanding

rather than to guide your treatment. Firstly, we'll start with the four cardiac arrest rhythms.

And there's four possible rhythms that you'll see in a pulseless, unresponsive patient,

or a patient who's had a cardiac arrest. They can be categorized into

shockable, meaning that defibrillation may be effective and non-shockable, meaning that defibrillation

will not be effective and should not be used. The shockable rhythms are ventricular tachycardia

and ventricular fibrillation, so vT and and vf and the non-shockable rhythms are

pulseless electrical activity which refers to all electrical activity except vf and vt including if you

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